This site is intended to show and keep track of many of the things I have worked on in the past. It includes programs, 3D models, rendered pictures, designs...

Thursday, July 21, 2011

Target Search

Target Search was the iPad application that I developed for my Diploma Thesis. It was presented at the CeBit Exhibition in Hannover Germany. The Abstract can be found below.

AbstractAs users are confronted with more complex and larger amounts of data, it becomes increasingly difficult to filter out the relevant information. One way to support users in this regard is to develop a user interface which visualizes the data in an appropriate way and allows users to formulate vague queries to easily and quickly find the information they are interested in. For this purpose a radial user interface is developed that provides an integrated view of queries and results. In order to allow a user to explore the results of even slight query changes, queries can be interactively manipulated with the results being immediately visualized. Additionally the interface takes the context of the user into account in order to supply her or him with more relevant information.

This thesis follows the development of such a user interface based on the user-centered design approach. First different designs are developed and compared until an appropriate design is found. This design is then implemented as an example on an iPad device in the form of an iOS program. The development is accompanied by user studies in order to ensure that the program achieves the usability goals which were defined and set based on a user and task analysis at the beginning of the development process.